Prevalence Profile of Oral Disease in Ancient Population

Abstract

Oral disease has a close relationship with the subsistence patterns and attracts great attention in the paleopa- thological research all over the world. This review provides an overview of the general situation of the oral disease during the different historical era trying to mouse out the pathogeny and the rule of course of such diseases. It has been a long history since human beings evolve from ape to man. Human's oral diseases develop along with the evolution of human's cranio-maxillofacial and teeth forms as well. The dental system is a valuable source of in- formation to understand the quality of life of ancient peoples in a particular historic and geographical frame. This paper makes a brief introduction for the common oral diseases in- cluding dental caries, periodontal disease and tooth attrition from ancient human skulls which belong to different historic era and different region. The aim is designed to understand the general prevalence of oral disease of ancient human, to make clear the pathogeny, and to master the law of develop- ment. Furthermore, it will guide us to prevent and cure mod- ern human's oral disease appropriately. DENTAL CARIES Firstly, the concept of prevalence, incidence and DMFT are defined as follow: 1 Prevalence is the total number of cases of a given disease in a specified population at a designated time.